


Picchu

by imkerfuffled



Category: Young Wizards - Diane Duane
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-29
Updated: 2015-12-14
Packaged: 2018-05-04 00:05:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5312183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imkerfuffled/pseuds/imkerfuffled
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before: before the Lone One's redemption, before Tom and Carl, before the Winged Defender, there was a bird. And that bird had a Voice in her head.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Great Forest

**Author's Note:**

> I was just musing over how the Powers work in the yw 'verse--you know, perfectly normal, everyday thoughts--and it occurred to me that I'd always thought of Peach and the One's Champion as a single entity, when really, from what we know of Ronan's experience, that's not true. So I wrote a thing. This might get a bit longer depending on if I write a third part or not. (I've got this idea floating around in my head to make this chapter basically her origin, then the 2nd one is kinda more transitional, and then the 3rd one'll be with Tom and Carl)

As far as birds went, she wasn’t a particularly remarkable one. She ate the same food all the others ate, flew the same way all the others flew, and had the same brilliant red and blue markings as all the others of her kind. She spent her days foraging in the Great Forest with her flock, and her nights resting by the community tree. In that regard, there was very little to distinguish her from others of her species.

Though she was still young and not half grown, she had developed a reputation among her flock members as being somewhat caustic and quick to lash out at those she did not know well. Those willing to overlook that quality in her would often remark at how expertly she found new sources of food and new shelters for the flock, or how accurately she could predict the movements of predators. She never thought to question that ability of hers; she simply knew, sometimes, when things were supposedto be, and she was content in that knowing. Most often, she did it without trying. She would glide along, as though in the wind’s command, and wherever it took her she would find food. Or, if one day she remarked on how many lights had passed since the last Sharp Eyed One dared attack their flock, the next might find one such bird carrying off one of their own.

This didn’t make her special, though. Plenty of other birds possessed similar knowings; they were called instincts.

 

She was alone when it changed.

For several shiftings of the light, she had worked her way through a clump of small, exceptionally juicy fruit with a methodical, possessive air, fending off any would-be thieves who ventured her way. She had just finished off her last bite for the time being and began preening her feathers, when the strange voice spoke to her.

 _Hello,_ It said.

The shock nearly toppled her off her perch, and only by quickly flapping her wings did she manage to right herself. She spun around, searching for the source of the disturbance with a mind to clip its feathers for startling her, but she found nothing.

 _I am not out there,_ the Voice said, _I am a part of you, just as you are a part of this rainforest._

This time, she lifted from her branch with an agitated squawk and resolved to fly as far as it took to escape this strange Voice that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once.

 _You have no need to fear me,_ It assured her, _Besides, that won’t do you any good in the first place._ If she had paid attention at that moment, she might have wondered at the resigned, almost weary edge to the words, tinged with something akin to amusement. Instead, she focused on flapping her wings faster and faster, gaining speed as she zipped through the dappled upper regions of the Great Forest. Eventually, once enough distance had been placed between herself and the fruit tree, she dared slow down and tentatively land on a new branch, tilting her head from side to side as she listened for any sign that the Voice had followed her flight.

 _I am still here,_ came the answer. She squawked again and ruffled her feathers irritably.

“Can’t you see I’m trying to get away from you?” she asked it.

 _Yes. Good luck with that,_ It said, the humor in Its voice now plainly evident.

“Well, the polite thing to do would be to leave me alone,” she grumbled.

_You’re not usually one to do the polite thing though, are you?_

In response, she cawed something that would be incredibly rude if the Voice had the proper anatomy to follow her suggestion. She said nothing more for a few seconds, waiting for the Voice to speak again. When it finally became clear that It wouldn’t, she gave a small, huffing warble and asked the question she probably should have when It first spoke. “What are you?”

 _I am many things to many people,_ It said, _I am the Messenger, the Michael Power. I am the Winged Defender…_

“‘Winged?’” she scoffed, “You don’t have wings.”

 _I have yours,_ the Voice said.

She huffed again and puffed out her plumage in skepticism. “Why are you in my head? Why not someone else’s?”

_Because you are special._

She gave a pleased little ruffle of her feathers, the only acknowledgement of the flattery’s effect on her. “But I’m just like all the others,” she said, “I’m not special.”

_You will be._


	2. In Transit

For many countless lights, she grew accustomed to the Defender living inside her head. Over time, It and she learned to work together, though she still had no idea why It had chosen her. In exchange for Its presence, It told her stories, answering to her every curiosity about the world beyond the Great Forest. It told her tales about a land far past the trees, where the Two Legged Ones ruled the Earth in towering pillars of clear stone…

 _What’s the Earth?_ She asked, having nearly perfected the art of communicating through thought. Even here, where there were no others nearby, she dared not speak out loud in case someone did overhear.

 _It is… everything in this world: the trees, the birds and the beasts, all the land beyond the Great Forest,_ said the Defender, _Someday, you will see it._

 _When?_ She asked, cawing excitedly.

The Winged Defender stayed silent.

 

Exactly three passings of the light later, she was captured by a group of Two Legged Ones and stuffed in a tiny space with bars made of shiny, frozen vine-like material. She had been flying with the wind again, following one of her knowings when she saw the Two Legged Ones, and with all of the Defender’s stories fresh in her mind, she had been too curious. Too trusting. She had hopped along the ground to get a better look at them, and in return they stabbed her with a stick full of lightning. The next thing she knew, she was in a dark, unnaturally uniform cave with other birds like her trapped behind their own shiny vines.

They said that this was the end of things, that no one who the Snatchers took had ever been seen again.

All the Winged Defender would say was, _I’m sorry._  

 

Eventually, she found herself in another dark, square cave with other trapped creatures, in the belly of a great beast that sloshed about and groaned as it rocked. All throughout the voyage, the Defender kept up a running commentary on their situation.

 _This is a cage,_ It said, _This is a ship. This is the ocean. This is the land beyond the Great Forest._

She paid It no attention. She no longer cared about seeing the land beyond the Great Forest.

_It will all be alright in the end._

She refused to believe It.

 

* * *

 

By the time she arrived in the big, bright building full of loud noises and the smells of more birds than she could ever count, some of which she couldn't have imagined even in her wildest dreams ( _A pet shop,_ the Defender told her, _strictly avian, not strictly legal_ ), she still would not speak to It, though it kept giving her words for whatever things she did not recognize. She considered telling it to stop, but that would mean acknowledging Its presence, so she stayed silent.

The Two Legged Ones ( _humans)_ here fed her the same dry, tasteless pellets that the other ones ( _illegal smugglers)_ on the ship had fed her, and she wasted no time in spitting them back in the Two Legged Ones’ faces, along with all the most devastating insults she knew.

“That’s quite a temper you’ve got, mate” said the bird in her neighboring cage ( _cockatiel, Australian)_ , “Don’t worry, you’ll get over it before too long.”

“You try living with a disembodied voice in your head,” she snapped at him. After that, he did not try to speak to her again.

Within a few more cycles of the moon ( _months)_ , a pair of Two Legged Ones entered the store. By this point she simply ignored them, just as she had many times before when strange Two Legged Ones came by. This time, though, it was different. They began pointing at her cage while they spoke with another Two Legged One ( _employee)._ She was tempted to have the Defender translate it for her, but her stubbornness won out in the end.

The next day, they came back and took her home with them. They fed her nice food, and gave her plenty of space, and cared for her as well as they could. They even began teaching her short phrases in the Two Legged tongue.

( _English,_ said the Defender.)

“Shut up,” she wanted to reply in the Two Legged tongue.

It took her a long time of listening to her Two Legged Ones speak before she picked up on one specific word that somehow did not seem to translate to anything in her own tongue: “machupicchu.” No matter how long or how hard she tried, she just couldn’t puzzle it out. She nearly tore out all her feathers in her attempts to decipher it, and she got no further than realizing they usually used it to refer to herself.

Finally, finally after many long months of agonizing over the word, she gave in. She asked the Defender.

“What does that word mean?” she said one day in her own tongue, when her Two Legged Ones were both away from the nest. She had long ago lost the ability to speak in thoughts. “That word, ‘machupicchu?’”

 _That is the name they gave you,_ the Defender replied, sounding slightly relieved. It left, _So, you’re talking to me again, are you?_ unthought.

“Name?” she cocked her head to one side in confusion.

 _It is their way of distinguishing you from other beings,_ It said.

“Like… like how my flock used our unique calls to identify each other?” she said, remembering with sadness everyone she had left behind in the Great Forest.

 _Exactly,_ said the Defender, _But humans can’t understand your tongue—your language—and they don’t have the vocal structures necessary to imitate it, so they gave you a new name._

“Oh,” She thought for a moment, “So what does it mean when they call me ‘Peach?’”

_That’s a nickname. It’s just a shortened version of your full name. Lots of species use them, though this one seems particularly fond of the idea._

“A bit like me calling you the Defender?”

_I suppose so, yes._

“Because you still don’t have wings,” she insisted, though all her previous anger had, somewhere along the line, morphed into a teasing tone.

After that, she stopped ignoring It.

 

It took three years for Machu Picchu to admit, very softly even in her own head, _You might have been right._

 _Was I? About what?_ The Defender asked.

 _About things turning out okay in the end,_ she said, _I think I like it here._

 _Oh, Picchu!_ Even in thought, It was clearly laughing, _You haven’t even gotten to the good part yet._

* * *

 

It was a day, many years later, when Picchu’s humans were both away for work: one at the office, and the other, if Picchu had heard correctly, somewhere in California at a business conference. The only people in house were the new fledgling human (the baby, or as Picchu liked to call it, the sniveling mess of unnecessary cell functions) and the human paid to make sure the baby didn’t die in a tragic, possibly bird-related accident while its parents were away. Picchu had once, perhaps intentionally, left a sizable dropping on this human’s shoulder, so now whenever he came she had to stay locked up in her cage in the guest bedroom, contemplating various ways of exacting revenge on the sniveling mess of unnecessary cell functions.

 _It’s really not good to think about infanticide,_ the Defender chided her, _That’ll definitely speed up entropy._

 _Oh, shut it,_ Picchu said pleasantly, _I’m just fantasizing_. _It’s not like I’d ever actually_ _kill it. Maybe maim it a little, but…_ Picchu got the impression that the One’s Champion was rolling its incorporeal eyes at her.

The humans had left the window open. Something in the very depths of Picchu’s soul felt drawn to it in a way she couldn’t describe. She had no wish to leave this house and this family—for all her complaints, she loved it here—but…

The window was open, and she could almost feel the rustle of the wind in her wings, taste the fresh air on her tongue. It felt like… like something was supposed to happen, something that she was supposed to do. Something… instinctual.

She noticed that the Defender stayed unusually silent about the subject.

 _What should I do?_ She asked It, feeling an odd shiver of fear shooting down to the tips of her feathers. Fear, and anticipation as well.

 _You should do whatever feels necessary,_ It said after some hesitation.

 _The last time I had a knowing like this,_ she said, _They took me from the Great Forest._

 _Yes._ It was an acknowledgement of fact, and nothing more.

 _If I follow this, will it be like last time?_ She asked.

For what felt like a long time, the Defender didn’t answer.

Machu Picchu took a deep breath, picked the lock on her cage, and left her second home behind.


	3. Crossroads

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Never mind, there will definitely be four chapters.

She flew high above the houses, staring in curiosity at their identical rooftops, and their identical driveways, and roads, and even identical cars, as the view stretched on for miles and miles.

 _So_ this _is what a neighborhood looks like,_ she said, _What happened to the ‘towering pillars of glass?’_

_They’re in New York City._

Peach gave a belligerent squawk. _It’s more orderly than I imagined._ _I don’t like it._

_Of course you don’t._

Her flight took her past row after row of houses, until she wasn’t sure she could find her own again if she tried. She went wherever her wings took her, until finally she reached a cul-de-sac that, for some inexplicable reason, felt more promising than the others. Though she may not have had one of her knowings for years, she still remembered how they worked.

At the end of the cul-de-sac was a large, oblong island of grass in the middle of the street, with an old oak tree growing at one end. Two humans sat at the other end—male, and, as far as Picchu could tell, still fairly young. With their similar hair color and body type, she thought at first they might be twins, though one was slightly taller than the other. As she got closer, she could see how they huddled around a large, red book in the taller one’s lap. Picchu landed in the upper branches of the tree to get a better view.

“Schenectady, Tom,” the shorter one was saying, “How the hell did we wind up in Schenectady?”

“Oh, is _that_ where we are?” the taller one, Tom, asked.

“Yeah, look,” the shorter one pointed to a spot in the book, then repeated, more emphatically, “What the hell are we doing in Schenectady?”

“How am I supposed to know? You’re the gating expert!” Tom, said without any real annoyance.

“Don’t you try to blame this on me, Thomas Swale. I don’t screw up the temporospatial stuff.”

“Oh yeah, Mr. Revolutionary-War-Soldiers-In-the-Dorm-Room?”

The shorter human groaned and leapt to his feet, pacing to and fro on the grass as he ran a hand through his short hair. “Powers on a _stick,”_ he muttered.

Tom burst into an uncontrollable fit of giggles. “Did you really just say—?”

“Shut up, this isn’t funny,” the shorter one said, “I’ve got a final in three hours. I can’t miss another exam; I’ll be kicked out.”

“Okay, okay, _Carl_ ,” Tom hid his grin behind his sleeve, “You go Obi-Wan the area, and I’ll figure out what went wrong with this spell, alright?”

As Carl grumbled his response, Picchu ruffled her feathers a little.

 _They really are wizards!_ She said, softly enough that only the Defender could hear her.

Carl began walking in a wide circle around Tom, who had taken out a pencil and was scribbling notes in the margins of his book. With each few steps Carl took, he whispered words in the Speech that Picchu couldn’t make out, though she sensed the power behind them.

 _A selective visibility shield,_ the Defender explained. Picchu shivered. By now, the Speech was the language she spoke most often with the Defender, but she had never before heard it wielded by those who could unlock its full potential.

She waited until Carl stood directly underneath her to speak to him.

“Hello,” she said in English.

Carl jumped about an inch in the air and stumbled over his description of the space he wanted to shield, nearly adding a power of ten to the circle’s radius.

Picchu tutted reprovingly. “Careful now. That’s the sort of mistake that’ll land you in Schenectady.” Since her English vocabulary was still fairly limited, she had switched back to her own language, knowing he could understand it through the Speech.

He stared up at her, his mouth hanging open in shock. Picchu was tempted to spit a leaf in it.

“Holy Powers that Be,” he finally muttered to himself.

 _He has no idea,_ Picchu snickered to her own personal Power.

 _He really doesn’t,_ It said, _You should keep him._

 _‘Should’ or_ ‘should _?’_ she asked, the former being a mere suggestion in the Speech, the latter implying certain certainties about the future.

_Go find out._

Carl had opened his mouth again, to shout, “Tom! There’s a parrot in this tree, and it’s talking to me!”

Picchu clucked her beak. “Macaw!” she squawked, “I’m a scarlet macaw, you idiot!” ‘Idiot,’ she said in English.

“Tom!” Carl shouted again.

“What? I’m right here. There’s no need to—oh,” Tom had looked up from his book to see Picchu perched on her branch, regarding Carl with a look of obvious annoyance.

“Tom, this bird called me an idiot,” Carl pointed an accusing finger at Picchu.

“He can’t tell the difference between a parrot and a macaw!” she cawed back, fluffing her feathers in indignation.

“Um…” Tom spluttered, “I don’t—Carl, did you just pick a fight with a bird?”

Carl shut his mouth.

“So, uh. Hello,” Tom said to Peach after a moment, “What’s your name?”

“Machu Picchu,” she replied, pointedly not looking at Carl as she preened herself.

Tom and Carl exchanged a glance, no doubt wondering about the strange name for a bird, and Tom shrugged. “What brings a scarlet macaw to the middle of Schenectady?” he asked.

“It’s where I’m needed.” She wouldn’t say anything more on the subject.

 

It took exactly five and a half minutes for the two wizards to find the source of their problems. They had, somewhere along the line, shifted a decimal point one place too far to the right. The second Tom proclaimed this while smacking his manual repeatedly against his head, Carl slowly turned to stare at Picchu, who had traded her perch for a spot on the grass closer by. She cocked her head at him, not sure what could have caused the look of dumbfounded shock on his face.

“You knew,” he whispered, “You… You knew all along, didn’t you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Picchu said, with the self-important, though entirely fabricated air of someone who knew exactly what he was talking about.

“But… you…” Carl continued, “‘That’s the sort of mistake that’ll land you in Schenectady.’ You _knew_ about the decimal point!”

 _Well, would you look at that,_ she thought, _I did._

 _Yes,_ the Defender said, _You did._

“Perhaps,” she said out loud, “Or perhaps I _knew_ about it.” The version of ‘knew’ she used in the Speech was different from the one Carl had; hers implied foreknowledge, rather than the knowledge of the regular kind.

Meanwhile, Tom had stopped smacking himself with his manual in favor of staring off into the distance with a haunted expression, repeating in various sequences, “Oh God, we could have died. We could have wound up in _space,_ or _worse._ I don’t want to be known as the wizard who died over a spellcheck error.”

Abruptly, Carl grabbed his shoulder and shook him out of his daze. “Tom, can we keep her?”

“What?” Tom said.

“What?” Picchu said at the same time, though with considerably more outrage, “Who said anything about keeping anyone?”

 _Wait…_ the Defender advised.

“Carl, we can’t just—”

“She’s _oracular,_ ” Carl interrupted, still shaking Tom by the shoulder, “Come on, the timing's perfect! You started getting serious about your visionary studies, and now we run into someone who can actually see into the future? You could  _almost_ call it a coincidence.”

Tom stared at Picchu with new interest. “There’s no such thing as coincidences,” he said softly.

“Exactly," both Picchu and Carl said at the same time. They did a double take and stared at each other.

“Sounds like the Powers want us to work together,” Carl said, “What do you say, bird?”

Picchu eyed him skeptically. “Only if you learn the difference between parrots and macaws, human.”

"It's a deal then," Carl grinned and turned to Tom. “See, that is how you negotiate a successful team-up.”

Tom grumbled something that sounded like, “How was _I_ supposed to know it was a sex thing for their species, it was _nowhere_ in the manual…” and Picchu decided she probably didn’t want to know the details behind that story. Once he’d recovered, he flipped his manual open to a blank page. “Where do you live around here?” he asked, “So we can get in touch?”

“Nowhere at the moment,” Picchu said, taking a sudden interest in the feathers on her right wing.

“Great!” Carl cried, “She can stay with us.”

Tom and Picchu both stared at him like he’d grown an extra head, or—since Picchu suspected Tom had actually seen creatures who grew extra heads—something even stranger. “Carl,” he said, speaking as one might to a particularly oblivious child, “We can’t even sneak fish past our RA. How would he miss a scarlet macaw?”

“We’re wizards. We’d think of something.”

As they launched into an argument about whatever an RA was and whether or not his powers of observation had anything to do with the Lone One, Peach gave them a contemplative look.

 _This is what the knowing was about,_ she said, in almost a thought-whisper, to the Defender, _Isn’t it?_

_Perhaps._

A shiver ran through Peach’s entire body, starting at the base of her neck and rippling all the way to the tips of her tail feathers. Some part of her knew; whatever she said next would determine how the rest of her life played out.

“Blueberries,” she said. Both wizards fell silent and stared at her. “I’m going to need blueberries. Lots of blueberries. And those little graham cracker animals. Oh, and an actual tree to roost in, or at least something potted; if you think I’m ever getting in a metal cage again, you’re out of your minds.”


	4. 2700 Rose Avenue

On the kitchen floor, hidden up to his waist in the cupboard under the sink, lay Carl. His usual array of wrenches, screwdrivers, and various disguised wizardries floated in the air around his knees, and every so often muffled grunts and curses would come from inside the cupboard. Tom stood off to the side offering ill-received advice, his shoulders shaking with laughter.

Picchu rolled her eyes at the pair. She had already exhausted all her best insults for this kind of situation two years ago, when Carl tried to fix the shower. Or last winter when he tried to fix the heater, or last week when he tried to fix the toilet. At least this time there wasn’t any water gushing over the floor. For someone Tom often described as a “wizarding mechanic,” Carl couldn’t recognize the more mundane types of mechanical skills if they hit him in the head with a steel pipe, as the kitchen sink had just done. Carl swore loudly.

 _How do they ever get anything done?_ Picchu said to the Defender.

 _Good question,_ It chuckled, with the same friendly antagonism that everyone in the household held for each other.

At this point in their relationship—so many years after that fateful day in the Great Forest that Picchu’s memory of it was beginning to blur—they hardly needed to speak to understand each other. More and more frequently now, Picchu found the differences between the two of them blurring as well, so much so that she sometimes had trouble distinguishing her thoughts from Its. The oft-quoted phrase “Those who serve the Powers, themselves become the Powers,” came to mind once more, as it had many times over the years. She had no doubt that in the end, when Timeheart came calling for her, she and the Defender would be one and the same, and the thought was strangely comforting to her. Or perhaps not so strangely.

She shook her head at the sudden image of how her younger self would have reacted to that line of thinking, and she hopped off her perch on the tallest cupboard. Gliding over Tom’s head, she cawed out a perfunctory insult to Carl as her flight took her into the open pantry. Carl answered with a rude hand gesture, which she ignored in favor of the box of animal crackers on the pantry shelf. She hooked one talon over its corner and used the other foot and her beak to work open the lid.

“Picchu!” Tom suddenly scolded, catching her in the act at the last moment, “Put down the box!”

Picchu lifted off in a storm of bright feathers and cacophonous squawking, clutching the cracker box tight in defiance.

“Peach, those aren’t yours. Put them down,” Tom said, quickly stepping in to block the doorway. Picchu darted left and right, trying to dodge around his arms.

“Never!” she shrieked.

Another loud thud and an increasingly creative string of curses came from under the sink, before Carl shouted, “Bird! If you don’t shut up right now I’ll spell you stuck in there!”

Picchu just cackled wickedly, and Tom shouted back, “Carl, that’s the worst idea you’ve had all day; she’ll eat everything!” Momentarily distracted as he was, Picchu saw her opening and took it. She dived under his arms, just narrowly missing his fingertips as they grabbed at her, and banked up sharply in front of the marble island in the center of the kitchen.

“Freedo—sqaaak!” Just before she escaped his reach, Tom snatched at the box and all the little graham cracker animals scattered across the floor, clattering on the tiles like—

_Dappled, translucent shards. Green and gold. Silicon. Splintering, shattering all around her…_

Her wings faltered at the sudden, vivid image, and only a clumsy landing on the island saved her from falling out of the air entirely. It was all over in a second, but she couldn’t rid herself of the sheer, quaking terror that accompanied this vision.

_What…?_

Tom’s eyes narrowed slightly in concern, but before he could say anything, Carl, whose head was still stuck under the sink, groaned. “Tell me that wasn’t what I think it was.”

“Now look what you’ve done,” Picchu said to Tom, regaining her composure in an instant, “Can’t trust you with anything, can I?”

“Yes, clearly your insatiable addiction to graham crackers is all my fault,” Tom said as he stooped down to pick up the crackers. Picchu grumbled something under her breath about enablers and allocations of blame, and she nudged a fallen bird cracker across the counter for him—

_Cold. Feathers on a marbled surface. Red and blue on green and gold and red and red and red. Pain. So much pain and cold like fire. Hissing, popping, airless. A blinding light and a high, clear laugh rising to counter that harsh One’s…_

This time, she couldn’t stop the shivers that wracked her body in her instinctive reaction to what she had felt. It felt like a thousand bolts of lightning had just shot through her body, or like someone had removed her entire skeletal structure and replaced it with jelly casts, and no matter how hard she tried to still her shaking, it refused to abate. Never before had a vision affected her so badly, or sent such intense emotions racing down her every nerve and synapse. For one terrified second that seemed to stretch into eternity, she thought she was dying.

Dying.

That was it.

 _Oh, that’s just great,_ she thought with a shaky attempt at cool-headedness, _I’m going to die of, what was that, exposure to vacuum? If this pair of idiots gets me killed in another Schenectady mistake, I’m coming back to haunt their asses. One above us, tell me that’s not what happens!_

 _I don’t know anything more than you do at this point,_ the Defender said, sounding almost hesitant to answer.

 _A lot of help you are, Oh Wingless One._ If her customary nickname for It came out a little harsher than usual, she could hardly be blamed for it.

“Picchu?” The concern in Tom’s voice jolted her back to reality. “Are you okay? What’s wrong?”

“I’m fine,” she snapped, shoving his hand away from her with a flap of her wing.

“You don’t look fine,” Carl said with just as much worry as Tom. He had risen from under the sink and now stood by the counter opposite Tom. In any other situation, Picchu would probably laugh at his mussed up hair and the smudged grease stains on his shirt, but now she just wondered how long she had huddled here shivering, that Carl had time to get up and walk to the island.

“I’m _fine,”_ she said again, “I just need to think.” Before either human could respond, she flapped past them, towards the den. She could practically hear their silent debate on whether or not to go after her. They must have decided to leave her alone, because when she landed on her corner perch in the den, she couldn’t hear any human feet following after her.

Only then, out of sight and out of earshot of the kitchen, did she close her eyes and allow the vision to wash over her once more, welcoming the fear and the pain that came along with it to try to decipher as much out of it as she could.

 _That dappled glass again, the planet’s surface. Something, an explosion from behind, and sudden decompression. What is that? A shield spell bursting, yes. On her back now? A dark sky above her, pinpointed with stars, glowing brighter and brighter as she watched, strangely familiar to her, like something from a dream. There was pain, yes, but also triumph and serenity and fierce, fierce joy. A sense that something long awaited was_ finally _coming to pass._

 _Now what does that mean?_ She mused, pushing at the vision with her mind, but to no avail. In the few minutes she had spent analyzing what she had seen, her breathing had slowed enough for her to approach it rationally, rather than the emotional mess that she had been at first.

 _Don’t ask me,_ the Defender replied, but the fizzling undercurrent of excitement in Its voice betrayed It. It had an idea, a far-flung hope that It wouldn’t share with Peach.

She ruffled her feathers, partially out of annoyance and partially out of wariness, recalling for the first time in years when the Defender had first hid things from her. This had the same feel to it: the same twinge of guilt. _Don’t you start that again with me,_ she warned It.

 _I’m not trying to,_ It said truthfully enough to put her suspicions at ease, _I can’t be sure if I’m right yet. If I’m not, and this isn’t the right time, it could bring undue attention to us. But if I_ am _right…_ Here It gave a mental shiver of anticipation. _If I’m right, I can’t risk That One learning of it._

 _Oh…_ Picchu said. _I suppose that makes sense._

_Of course it does. I said it._

_Ha ha, featherbrain,_ she said. Then, abruptly, _You came to me so I could die, didn’t you?_

The Defender seemed taken aback by the suddenness of her question, and for a long minute, It didn't say a word. In the distance Picchu could hear Annie barking in the yard about two young wizards spying through the hedge, and Tom’s answering shout.

 _It is often the case with avatars of your sort,_ It said eventually, choosing Its words carefully, knowing that Picchu could still sense the meaning behind them despite all Its evasion, _that they must die in order to achieve their full potential._

 _I see,_ Picchu said slowly, waiting for the wave of anger and betrayal to wash over her. But to her surprise, it never came. _In that case, I’ll be sure to make the most of it._

_It’s all any of us can do._

* * *

 

She felt it building up for weeks: the sense of impending… not doom so much, for that implied she feared what would come to pass, but suspense. Something big was about to happen, something that the universe had never seen before, but whether the Defender was right or not about what that was, she knew one thing; she would die, and It would triumph. As the event crept closer, flashes of vision kept flickering behind her consciousness like shadows seen from of the corners of her eyes: too fleeting and intangible to make sense of, but too solid to ignore. Before, they had come to her in sporadic bursts, but now…

Now they came in droves, nearly flooding her at times with their unintelligible promises.

It was happening. Soon. Perhaps even tonight.

_A spidery computer laptop. Stalky eyes. And a many-legged dome of dappled green and gold._

_A sign hanging from a ceiling, bringing to mind images of desolate, rusty landscapes, and bright morning stars with smothering atmospheres, and… a humanoid woman’s bathroom?_

_A human boy burning with a fierce brilliance that she knew as well as she knew herself, letting fly a spear from the time of the ancients._

Many of these visions she knew weren’t related to her death, at least not directly. The laptop and the turtle-like creature she had Seen before, but the laptop never had legs or eye stalks in her visions. And the human boy she could understand well enough; he was like her, tied to the Defender. Or he would be in the future. She picked up a similar mindset from him: a stubborn resolve for martyrdom, conflicted, but still clear-headed.

She had no idea what Mars, Venus, and a ladies’ room might have in common.

As she contemplated this, Carl shuffled, bleary-eyed this early in the morning, into the kitchen to make his cup of coffee. Something about the sight, so familiar and so ridiculously endearing, sent such an overwhelming wave of affection crashed over Peach that it froze her in place on top of the fireplace, in the middle of preening her tail feathers.

For all their bickering and insults, Carl had always been Picchu’s favorite. She loved Tom, of course (not that she would ever admit it out loud), but she just clicked better with Carl, once she got past her initial impression of him. They shared a sharp sense of humor and a wicked competitive streak that had led to several truly epic prank wars over the years. Carl was more down to Earth, and ever so slightly more cynical than Tom, and he came up with all the best comebacks, and they always snarked at movies on TV together until Tom threw a couch pillow at one of them, and sometimes he let her taste the food when it was his turn to cook, and one day they had driven Tom up the wall by speaking only in Broadway quotes, and _Powers_ she would miss them. Carl, Tom, Annie, Monty, Dudley, Nita, Dairine, Kit, Akagani, Doitsu, Showa, all the other koi that she loved to antagonize so much, that Rodriguez girl who always fed her chocolate when Tom and Carl weren’t looking, Irina Mladen’s canary, Kit’s dog Ponch with his oddly familiar aura…

She wasn’t used to this feeling.

Ruffling her feathers to regain some semblance of calm, she launched off the fireplace and glided over to Carl, where he was in the process of spreading butter on a slice of toast. When he heard the sound of her wings, he automatically lifted his arm for her to land on.

“Hey, bird,” he said, yawing.

“Hey yourself,” Picchu said. She snatched a bite of his toast and ignored the sleepy glare he gave her.

_A stolen bologna and mustard sandwich sitting on a silicon surface. Crumbs scattered around it._

Picchu blinked at the incongruity of the vision, and started climbing up Carl’s shoulder to reach where he’d raised the toast.

“Oh, no you don’t,” Carl muttered, trying to swipe at her beak with his free hand, which proved difficult due to the fact that she was standing on it. She nibbled on his finger instead, and he had to give her the toast to make her stop. “That’s extortion, you jailbird.”

“If you keep making terrible puns like that, I might reconsider my decision to like you,” she muttered as she picked away at the toast.

“I didn’t know you ever considered it in the first place,” Carl joked.

Picchu smirked through her full beak, fighting back the aftershocks of that earlier wave of emotion. “You’re right, what was I thinking?” she said with an exaggerated roll of her eyes, “It was obviously temporary insanity.”

“Might want to get that checked out,” Carl said, straight-faced as he made his way to the coffee machine.

Picchu felt like her heart had been stuffed in a cage three sizes too small, suffocating, beating its wings in its need to escape, and she couldn’t clamp down hard enough to shove it in all the way.

Carl, oblivious to Picchu’s internal turmoil, shook out a helping of coffee grinds into a filter and stuck it in the percolator. After all these years, Picchu didn’t even need to concentrate to maintain her balance on his arm as he went through the motions, and again she felt that peculiar twinge in her heart.

“What’re you staring at?” he said.

Peach started and looked away, suddenly realizing that she _had_ been staring at him. _What is_ wrong _with me?_ She thought angrily, ignoring the Defender’s chuckle in the back of her mind.

“I’m staring at your face. Your mustache looks especially stupid today,” she said, instantly playing it off as annoyance. In the coffee machine, the steady stream of liquid slowed to an occasional drip.

“It always looks like this,” Carl said as he took the pot out of its stand and poured it into his cup.

“Exactly.” Picchu darted her beak down to steal a gulp of coffee.

“Screw you, bird,” Carl expertly moved his cup out of reach with his free hand and aimed a rude gesture at her with the other hand. She bit his finger.

“Screw you, yourself,” Picchu said. “What're you going to do without someone to save you from the dangers of caffeine addiction?”

The words came out on their own, with no conscious thought on Picchu’s part. As soon as they left her beak, she wished she could take them back somehow, use one of Carl’s timeslides to make sure she never said them. But it was too late. Carl turned to look at her—really look at her—for the first time that morning.

“That sounds almost like you’re planning to leave,” he said softly.

“What?” Picchu squawked, “No, of course not!”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay,” Carl nodded, “Good.”

Wizards can’t lie. But Picchu never claimed to be a wizard.

* * *

 

Less than a week later, it didn’t come as a surprise to the two Seniors when Nit and Kit came back from Dairine’s Ordeal one person short. They didn’t discuss it at first beyond sharing a sad, resigned glance as they let the Callahans rejoice over Dairine’s return, and it wasn’t until later, once Dairine had rushed off to the restroom and Nita had begun her initial, incoherent stages of explanation, that Carl caught Kit’s eye and whispered, “Peach?”

The wide grin that spread across his face, _that_ was a surprise.


End file.
